"Ay," said Fellowes, eagerly, "we ought to prevent a wrong, provided we have the right as well as the power to interfere."

"I am supposing that we have the right as well as the power; as, for example, to prevent a man from murdering his neighbor, or a thief from entering his dwelling. There are, no doubt, many acts which, from our very limited right, we should have no business to prevent; as, for example, to prevent a man from getting tipsy at his own table with his own wine. But no such limitation can apply to Him who is supposed to be the Absolute Monarch of the universe; and yet He (according to your view) notoriously does not interpose to prevent the daily commission of the most heinous wrongs and cruelties under which the earth has groaned, and hearts have been breaking, for thousands of years. You will say, perhaps, that in all such instances we must believe that there are some reasons for His conduct, though we cannot guess what they are. Ah! my friend, if you come to believing, you may believe also that the difficulties involved in the Scriptural representations of the Divine character and proceedings are susceptible of a similar solution. If you come to believing, I think the Christian can believe as well as you, and rather more consistently. But let me proceed." He then read on.

It is plain, that, in accordance with our primitive "moral intuitions" (if we have any), we should hold him who had the power to prevent a wrong, and did not use it, as a participator and accomplice in the crime he did not prevent. Applying, therefore, the principles of Mr. Newman, I must refuse to acknowledge such conduct on the part of the Divine Being, and to say, that such things are not done by him. If I may trust my whisper of him, derived from analogous moral qualities in myself, I must believe that an administration which so ruthlessly permits these things is not his work; but that his power, wisdom, and goodness have been thwarted, baffled, and overmastered by some "omnipotent devil," to use Mr. Newman's expression; if it be, then that whisper of him cannot be trusted: the heathen was right, "Sunt superis sua jura." In other words, I feel that I must become an Atheist, a Pantheist, a Manichaean, or—what I am—a sceptic.

All these perplexities are increased when I trace them up to that profound mystery in which they all originate,—I mean the permission of physical and moral evil. Either evil could have been prevented or not; if it could, its immense and horrible prevalence is at war with the intuition already referred to; if it could not, who shall prove it? I am no more able to contradict the intuitions of the intellect than those of the conscience; and if any thing can be called a contradiction of the former, it is to be told that a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and beneficence could not construct a world without an immensity of evil in it; no reason being assignable or even imaginable for such a proposition, except the fact that such a world has not been created! I am therefore compelled to doubt, whether such a universe be really the fabrication of such a Being. It is impossible to express my astonishment at the ease with which Mr. Newman disposes of the difficulties connected with the origin and perpetuation of physical and moral evil. His arguments are just two of the most hackneyed commonplaces with which metaphysicians have attempted to evade these stupendous difficulties; and it is not too much to say, that there never was a man who was not resolved that his theory must stand, who pretended to attach any importance to them. They are most gratuitously assumed, and even then are most trivial alleviations; a mere plaster of brown paper for a deep-seated cancer.

I certainly know of no other man who has stood so unabashed in front of these awful forms. One almost envies him the truly childlike faith with which he waves his hand to these Alps, and says, "Be ye removed, and east into the sea"; but the feeling is exchanged for another, when he seems to rub his eyes, and exclaim, "Presto, they are gone sure enough!" while you still feel that you stand far within the circumference of their awful shadows.

As to physical evil, Mr. Newman tells us, "Here may be sufficient to remark, that the difficulty on the Epicurean assumption, that physical case and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that is not true even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers, to which the existing order manifestly tends ...... As for susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process for the perfecting of the soul." (Soul, pp. 43, 44.)

This, then, is the fine balm for all the anguish under which the world has been groaning for these thousands of years! But, first, how does suffering tend to the perfection of the whole lower creation? It enfeebles, and at last destroys them, I know; but I am yet to Learn that it is essential to the perfection of animal life. Again, how does it minister to that of man, except he be more than the insect of the day, of which Mr. Newman's theology leaves him in utter doubt? And if he be immortal, how does it operate beneficially except as an instrument of moral improvement? And how rarely (comparatively) do we see that it has that effect! How often is it most prolonged and torturing in those who seem least to need it, and in those who are absolutely as yet incapable of learning from it; or, alas! are too evidently past learning from it! How often do we see, slowly sinking under the protracted agonies of consumption, cancer, or stone, all these various classes of mortals, without our being able to assign, or even conjecture, the slightest reason for such experiments! I acknowledge freely, all, at we can give no reasons for them; but it is to mock miserable humanity to give such reasons as these; doubly to mock it, if men be the ephemeral creatures which Mr. Newman's theology leaves in such doubt: since in that case we see not only (what we see at any rate) that physical evil does not always, nor even in many instances, produce a salutary moral effect, but that it hardly matters whether it does or not; for just as the poor patient may be beginning to be benefited by his discipline, and generally in consequence of it, he is unluckily annihilated; he dies of his medicine! Surely, if physical evil be this grand elixir, never was such a precious balm so improvidently expended. We may well say, only with much more reason, what the Jews said of Mary's box of ointment,—"Why was all this waste?" To be sure it is "given" in abundance "to the poor."

And, at the best, this exquisite reasoning gives no account whatever of that suffering which falls upon innocent infancy and childhood. It destroys them, however, and effectually prevents their attaining the "perfection" which it is so admirable an instrument of developing, and that too before they can be morally benefited by the "salutary" sorrow it brings!

"Susceptibility to pain," says Mr. Newman, "is essential to corporeal being."

Yes, susceptibility to pain; just as a created being must be liable to annihilation. Must he be annihilated? Just as a hungry stomach must be liable to starvation. Must it be starved? The primary office of susceptibilities to pain would seem to be to forewarn us to provide against it. They certainly have that effect. Does it necessarily follow that they must involve anguish and death? Unless it be supposed, indeed, that nature, having provided such an admirable apparatus of "susceptibilities" of pain, thought it a thousand pities that they should not be employed.

But when it comes to "moral evil," which Mr. Newman acknowledges cannot be so lightly disposed of, what then?

Why, then he says, "Let the Gordian knot be cut."

Well, what then? Why, then Mr. Newman frankly "assumes" that it is "transitory and finite," (Soul, p. 45.) and will one day vanish from the universe, a supposition for which he condescends to give no reason whatever.

Stat pro ratione voluntas.

That this "moral evil" should have existed at all, much more to so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have been prevented.

I, of course, acknowledge that we can give no answer to the questions involved in this transcendent mystery,—that our ignorance is absolute; but I do say, that, if I am to trust to those "intuitions" of the Divine Goodness, on whose warranty Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker reject the Bible, as containing what is unworthy of their conceptions of God, I am compelled to proceed further in the same direction; and repudiate, as unworthy of Him, not merely some of the phenomena of the Book which men profess to be His word, but also some of the phenomena of that universe which men profess to be His work. If I can only judge, as these gentlemen urge, of such a Being by the analogies of my own nature, no "intuition" of theirs can possibly seem stronger than do mine, that beings absolutely innocent ought not to suffer; that to inflict suffering upon them is injustice; that to permit any evils which we can prevent is in like manner to be accomplices in the crime. On those very principles of all moral judgment which Mr. Newman says are innate and our only rule, I say I am compelled to these conclusions; for if God does those things which are ordinarily attributed to Him, He acts as much in contravention of these intuitions as in any acts attributed to Him in the Bible. If it be said, that there may be reasons for such apparent violations of rectitude, which we cannot fathom, I deny it not: but that is to acknowledge that the supposed maxims derived from the analogies of our own being are most deceptive as applied to the Supreme; it is to remit us to an act of absolute faith, by which, with no greater effort, nor so great, we may be reconciled to similar mysteries of the Bible. But above all is it to do this, to say that the origin and permission of physical and moral evil are inexplicable; and it is to double this demand on faith, to declare that it was all necessary, and could not be evaded in the construction of the universe even by infinite power, directed by infinite wisdom, and both animated by an infinite benevolence! As far as I can trust my reason at all, nothing seems more improbable; and if I receive it by a transcendent exercise of faith, I may, as before, give the Bible the benefit of a like act. I am compelled, therefore, on such principles, either to adopt a Manichaean hypothesis of the universe, or do what I have done,—adopt none at all.

I was talking to a friend on these subjects the other day: "Ah! but," said he, "many of those difficulties you mention oppress every hypothesis,—Christianity just as much as the rest."

This, I replied, is no answer to me nor to you, if you have a particle of candor; still less is it one to the Christian, who consistently applies the same principle of absolute faith to things apparently a priori incredible, whether found in the works or in the word of God. But if you think the argument of any force, apply it to the next Christian you meet, and see what answer he will make to you; it will not trouble him. But it is far more ridiculous addressed to me. I ask for something in the place of that Bible of which the faithful application of your own principles deprives me; and when I affirm that the difficulties of the universe are no less than those of the Bible I have surrendered, you tell me that the perplexities of my new position are no greater than those of the old! That clearly will not do. I must go further. If I am to yield to pretensions of any kind, I would infinitely prefer the yoke of the Bible to that of Messrs. Parker and Newman; for it is to nothing else than their dogmatism I must yield, if I admit that the difficulties which compel me to doubt in the one case are less than those which compel me to doubt in the other.

But it is not even true that the difficulties in question are left where they were by the adoption of any such theory as that of either Mr. Parker or Mr. Newman. I contend that they are all indefinitely increased. The Bible does at least give me a plausible account of some of the mysteries which baffle me: it tells me that man was created holy and happy; that he has fallen from his "excellent estate"; and hence the misery, ignorance, and guilt in which he is involved, and which have rendered revelation necessary.

But—and it brings me to the last step of my argument—if I accept the theory of the universe propounded by these writers, not only am I left without any such approximate solutions, or, if that be thought too strong a term, without any such alleviations, but all the difficulties as regards the character, attributes, and administration of God, are increased a thousand-fold. The Scripture account of the "fall,"—however inexplicable it may be that God should have permitted it,—yet does expressly assert that, somehow or other, it is man's fault, not God's; that man is not in his normal condition, nor in the condition for which he was created. Dark as are the clouds which envelop the Divine Ruler, "their skirts are tinged with gold,"—pervaded and penetrated throughout their dusky depths by that mercy which assures us that, in some intelligible sense, this condition of man is contrary to the Divine Will, which, from the first, resolved to remedy it; and that a day is coming when what is mysterious shall be explained,—so far, at least, that what has been "wrong" shall be "righted." But what is the theory of the universe propounded by these writers? So hideous (I solemnly declare it) that I feel ten times more compelled to reject the universe as a work of an infinitely gracious, wise, and powerful Creator, than if the difficulties had been simply left where the Bible leaves them. According to their theory, man is now, just what he was at first,—as he came from his Creator's hand; or rather in some parts of the world (thanks to himself though) a little better than he was originally; that God cast man forth, so constituted by the unhappy mal-admixture of the elements of his nature,—with such an inevitable subjection of the "idea" to the "conception," of the "spiritual faculty" to "the degraded types,"—that for unnumbered ages—for aught we know, myriads of ages—man has been slowly crawling up, a very sloth in "progress" (poor beast!), from the lowest Fetichism to Polytheism,—from Polytheism, in all its infinitude of degrading forms, to imperfect forms of Monotheism; and how small a portion of the race have even imperfectly reached this last term, let the spectacle of the world's religions at the present moment proclaim! From the more imperfect forms of Monotheism, the race is gradually to make "progress" to something else,—Heaven knows what! but certainly something still far below the horizon,—still concealed in the illimitable future. For this gradual transformation from the veriest religions grub into the spiritual Psyche, man was expressly equipped by the constitution of his nature,—he was created this grub. For all this truly geological spiritualism, and for all the infinitude of hideous superstitions and cruel wrongs involved in the course of this precious development, Mr. Parker tells us there was a necessity,—nothing less! It was necessary, no doubt for his logic, that he should say so; but, apart from his own argumentative exigencies, it is impossible even to imagine any necessity whatever. It was an "ordeal," it seems, through which man was obliged to pass. What is all this, but to acknowledge the unaccountable nature of the problem?

With this "religious" theory admirably coincides the hypothesis of man's having been originally created a savage, from which he was gradually exalted to the lowest stages of civilization,—a theory which I thought had (in mere shame) been abandoned to some few Deists of the last century, or the commencement of this. It is true that these writers do not expressly indorse it; but it is easy to see that they favor it; and it is most certain that it alone is consistent with their parallel theory of man's "religious development" from the vilest Fetichism to (shall we say?) a mythical Christianity; though even to that very few have yet arrived. According to this theory, the Great Father—supposed a being of infinite power, wisdom, and Goodness—threw his miserable offering on the face of the earth, with an admirable "absolute religion," no doubt, and an "admirable spiritual faculty," but the "idea" so inevitably subject to thwarting "conceptions," and the "spiritual faculty" so perpetually debauched by "awe and reverence," and the whole rabble of emotions and affections with which it was to keep company,—in fact, with the elements of his nature originally so ill poised and compounded, —that everywhere and for unnumbered ages man has been doomed and necessitated, and for unnumbered ages will be doomed and necessitated, to wallow in the most hideous, degrading, cruel forms of superstition, —inflicting and suffering reciprocally all the dreadful evils and wrongs which are entailed by them. For this man was created; such a thing he was,—through this "ordeal" he passes,—by original destination. If this be the picture of the Father of All, he is less kind to his off-spring than the most intimate "intuitions" teach them to be to theirs. The voice of nature teaches them not to expose their children; the Universal Father, according to this theory, remorselessly exposed his! Such a God, projected by the "spiritual faculties" of Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker, may be imagined to be a more worthy object of worship than the "God of the Bible": he shall never receive mine. If I am to abjure the Bible because it gives me unworthy conceptions of the Deity, I must, with more reason, abjure, on similar grounds, such a detestable theory of man's creation, destination, and history.

As to that "progress" which is promised for the future, it is like the necessity for the past, purely an invention of Mr. Parker; if I receive it, I must receive it simply as matter of prophecy. If the necessity has continued so long, then, for aught I know, it may continue for ever; the evil is all too certain,—the bright futurity is still a futurity. But if it ever became a reality, it would not neutralize one of the dark imputations which such a theory of the original destination and creation of man casts on the Divine character; not to say, that, if Mr. Newman's doubts of man's immortality be well founded, that better future will be of no more avail to the myriads of our race who have suffered under the long iron regime of necessity, than a reprieve to the wretch who was executed yesterday!

I told Harrington I must have a copy of the paper he had just read. I should like, with his leave, to publish it.

"O, and welcome," said he. "Only remember that its tendency is to show that there is no tenable resting place between a revealed religion and none at all; between the Bible and scepticism. If you make men sceptics,—mind, it is not my fault."

"I will take the risk," said I. "I wish the controversy to be brought to the issue you have mentioned. I know there will never be many sceptics, any more than there will be many atheists; and if men are convinced that the Via Media is as hard to find as you suppose,—or as that between Romanism and Protestantism,—they will take refuge in the BIBLE. And if it be the BOOK OF GOD indeed, this is the issue to which the great controversy will and ought to come. But how is it you were not tempted to become an atheist rather than a sceptic?"

"Why," said he, with a smile, "the great master of the Modern Academy had fortified me against that. Hume, you know, confesses that, if men be discovered without any impression of a Deity,—genuine atheists,—we may assume that they will be found the most degraded of the species, and only one remove above the brutes. Now I have no wish to be set down in that category."

"Very different." said I, "is the account our modern atheists give of themselves: they are contending that the banishment of God from the universe, by one or other of the various theories of Atheism or Pantheism (which I take to be the same thing, with different names), is the tendency of all modern science? and that when that science is perfect, God will be no more."

"My dear uncle," replied Harrington, "you are insufficiently informed in the mystery of modern theology. There are no atheists, properly speaking; they who are so called merely deny any personal, conscious, intelligent sovereign of the universe. Even those who call themselves so, and will have it that they are so, are told that they are none. I myself have perused statements of some of our modern 'spiritualists,' who know every thing, even other people's consciousness quite as well as their own (and perhaps better), that the said atheists are mistaken in thinking themselves such; that such genuine love of the spirit of universal nature is something truly divine, and that they are animated by 'a deeply religious spirit,' though they never suspected it!"

"Well," said I. "if you had too much reason, as you flattered yourself (adopting Hume's criterion), to become an atheist, could you not have adopted such views as those of Mr. G. Atkinson and Miss Martineau, who both possess surely (as they claim to possess) that 'religious reverence' of nature of which you have just spoken?"

"Why," he replied, "I am afraid that, if I had too much reason for the one, I have not faith enough for the other. That the miracles and prophecies of the Bible may possibly have been true,—only the effect of mesmerism;—that things quite as wonderful, or more so, happen every day by this wonderful agent;—that every phenomenon that takes place does so in virtue a perfectly wise LAW, without any wise LAWGIVER;—that this wise law has, it seems, prearranged that man should generally exhibit an inveterate tendency to religious systems of some kind, though all religions are absurd, and persist in believing in his free will, though free from a downright impossibility;—that these contradictions and absurdities of man are the result of an irreversible necessity, and yet that Mr. Atkinson may hope to correct them;—that, by the same necessity, man is in no degree culpable or responsible, and yet that Mr. Atkinson may perpetually blame him; —that no man can do any thing 'wrong,' and yet that till he believes that, man will never cease to do it;—that people may read without their eyes, and distinguish colors as colors though they are born blind;—that Bacon was an atheist, and that this may be proved by induction from his own writings;—these and other paradoxes, which I must believe, if I believe Mr. Atkinson, require a faith which it would really be unreasonable to expect from such a sceptic as I am."

_

July 18. Till three days ago, nothing since my last date has occurred having any special relation to the sole object of this journal. I was glad to escape on the 13th to a quiet church some miles off; and, after a plain and simple, but earnest, sermon from a venerable clergyman (of whom I should like to know a little more), I further refreshed my spirit by a long and solitary ramble of some hours through the beautiful scenery in the midst of which Harrington's dwelling is situated. In the course of it, I reviewed my own early conflicts, and augured from them happier days for my beloved nephew. I went carefully over all the main points of the argument for and against the truth of Christianity, which in youth had so often occupied me, and resolved that on some fair opportunity I would recount my story to him and Mr. Fellowes. I little thought then that I should have a larger and very miscellaneous audience to listen to me. But this will account for my not being to seek (as they say) when the occasion presented itself.

Three days ago (the 16th) a queer company assembled in Harrington's quiet house. The conversations and incidents connected with that day have led me to take refuge for the last two mornings in the solitude of my own chamber, that I might, undisturbed, recall and record them with as much accuracy and fulness as possible. Very much, indeed, that I wished to remember has vanished; but the substance of what too many said, as well as what I said myself made too deep an impression to be easily obliterated.

Be it known to you, my dear brother, that I have been not a little amused, I may even say instructed, by a trick played by your madcap nephew, for the honor and glory, I suppose, of his scepticism, or for some other motive, not easily divined. He promised me significantly an entertainment, in which I should enjoy the "feast of reason and the flow of soul," by which I little thought that he was going to collect a rare party of "Rationalists" and "Spiritualists," in fact, representatives of all the more prominent forms, whether of belief or unbelief. I may as well call it the

SCEPTIC'S SELECT PARTY.

You remember, I doubt not, the humorous paper in the Spectator, in which Addison introduces the whimsical nobleman who used to invite to his table parties of men (strangers to one another) all characterized by some similar personal defect or infirmity. On one occasion, twelve wooden-legged men found stumping into his dining-room, one after another, making, of course, a terrible clatter; on another, twelve guests, who all had the misfortune to squint, amused their host with their ludicrous cross lights; and on a third, the same number of stutterers entertained him still more, not only by their uncouth impediment, but by the anger with which they began to sputter at one another, on the supposition that each was mocking his neighbor. A short-hand writer, behind the scenes, was employed to take down the conversation, which, says the witty essayist, was easily done, inasmuch as one of the gentlemen was a quarter of an hour in saying "that the ducks and green peas were very good," and another almost an equal time in assenting to it. At the conclusion, however, the derided guests became aware of the trick their entertainer had played upon them; and from their hands, quicker than their tongues, he was obliged to make a precipitate retreat. Our dinner-party of yesterday did not break up in any such fracas, nor was the conversation so unhappily restricted. Yet the company was hardly better assorted. To bring it together, Harrington ransacked his immediate circle, and Fellowes unconsciously recruited for him in the university town. Our host had provided for our mutual edification an Italian gentleman, with whom he had had some pleasant intercourse on the Continent, (by the way he spoke English uncommonly well,) and now staying with a Roman Catholic in the neighborhood: this gentleman himself, with whom Harrington, by means of his former friend, has knocked up an acquaintance (he is a liberal Catholic of the true British species); our acquaintance, Fellowes, with his love of "insight" and "spiritualism"! a young surgeon from ——., a rare, perhaps unique, specimen of conversion to certain crude atheistical speculations of Mr. Atkinson and Miss Martineau; a young Englishman (an acquaintance of Harrington's) just fresh from Germany, after sundry semesters at Bonn and Tubingen, five hundred fathoms deep in German philosophy, and who hardly came once to the surface during the whole entertainment; three Rationalists (acquaintances of Fellowes), standing at somewhat different points in the spiritual thermometer, one a devoted advocate of Strauss: add to these a Deist, no unworthy representative of the old English school; one or two others further gone still; a Roman Catholic priest, an admirer of Father Newman, who therefore believes every thing; our sceptical friend Harrington, who believes nothing; and myself, still fool enough to believe the Bible to be "divine," —and you will acknowledge that a more curious party never sat down to edify one another with their absurdities and contradictions.

Questionable as was the entertainment for the mind, that for the body was unexceptionable. The dinner was excellent; our host performed his duties with admirable tact and grace; and somehow speedily put every body at his ease. Relieved, according to the judicious modern mode, of the care of supplying the plates of his guests, he had eye, ear, and tongue for every one, and leisure to direct the conversation into what channel he pleased. He took care to turn it for some time on indifferent topics; and each man lost his reserve and his frigidity almost before he was aware; so that, by the time dinner was fairly over, every one was ready for animated conversation. If any one began to have queer suspicions of his neighbors, he felt, as on board ship, that he was in for it, and bound, by common politeness, to make the best of it. The Deist, addressing himself to the Italian gentleman, asked him if he had heard lately from Italy. He replied in the negative.

"I can tell you some news, then," said he. "They say that the head of the illustrious Guicciardini family has been just imprisoned at Florence, having been detected reading in Diodati's Bible a chapter in the Gospel of St. John. Supposing the fact true, for a moment, may I ask if it would be the wish of the Roman Catholic Church, were she to regain her power in England, to imprison every one who was found reading a chapter in John? If so, England would have to enlarge her prisons."

"Not much," said one of the Rationalist gentlemen, laughing; "for if things go on as they have done, there will not, in a few years, be many who will be found reading a chapter in John."

"Perhaps so," said Harrington, smiling, "but, if for the reason you would assign, few will be found in church either; and the ecclesiastical authorities might perhaps put you in prison for that instead."

"O, I will answer for him!" said the Deist, who knew something of his plasticity; "our friend is very accommodating, and though he would not like to go to go to church, he would still less like to go to prison. And to church he would go; and look very devout into the bargain. But, however, I should like to hear what your Italian guest has to say to my question."

The impatience of the English Catholic could not be repressed.

"If," said he, "the Roman Catholic religion were to regain its ascendency to-morrow, it would leave our entire code of laws, liberties, and privileges just as it found them; it is one of the many calumnies with which our Church is continually treated, to say that she would act otherwise: and were it not so, I would immediately desert her."

The Catholic priest did not look well pleased with this frank avowal.

"I quite believe you," said our host. "I believe you are too much of an Englishman to say or to act otherwise."

"So do I," said the Deist; "I moreover agree with you, that, if the Roman Catholic religion were to regain her ascendency to-morrow, she would leave all our privileges intact; but would she the next day, and the day after that? In other words, is it an essential principle with her to persecute,—as in this instance, to imprison for peeping between the leaves of the Bible,—or is it not? Do you think, Signor, that in such acts the principles of your Church are complied with or violated?"

The Italian gentleman looked perplexed; he presumed that the Catholic Church complied with the actual laws of every country; and if such Country chose to deny religious liberty, the Church did not deem it requisite to declare opposition.

"I fear that is no answer to my question," cried the other, a little cavalierly. "It cannot serve you, Signor. It would not, indeed, serve you anywhere for we know the anxiety with which Rome has expressly secured, in her recent concordat with Spain, the recognition of the most intolerant maxims. But least can it serve you in the Papal States, where, unluckily for your observation, the Pope is monarch. Your remark would imply that your Church favored the principles of religious liberty rather than otherwise, but did not deem it right to oppose the will of civil governments. Are we to understand by that, that the chief of the Papal States abhors as a Pope what he does as a sovereign? that in the one capacity he protests against what he allows in the other? No, no," continued this brusque assailant, "It is too late to talk in that way. If the Church of Rome really approve of religious liberty,—of such principles as those which govern England,—where are her protests and her efforts against intolerance and persecution where she still retains power? It is the least that humanity can expect of her. If not, let her plainly say that, when she regains power in England, she will reform us to the condition of Spain and Italy in this matter. For my part, I frankly acknowledge, that I have more respect for a Roman Catholic who proclaims that it is inconsistent for his Church to tolerate where it has the power to repress, because I see that that is her uniform practice, and therefore ought to be her avowed maxim."

The Roman Catholic priest, who is a devoted admirer of Father Newman, said that he thought so too; and quoted some candid recent admissions to that effect from certain English Roman Catholic periodicals. "To employ," said he, "the very words of a recent convert to us from the Anglican Church, 'The Church of Rome may say, I cannot tolerate you; it is inconsistent with my principles; but you can tolerate me, for it is not inconsistent with yours."

The Deist remarked that it was straightforward; that he admired it. "Though as an argument," said he, "it is much as if a robber should say to an honest man on the king's highway, 'How advantageously I am situated! You cannot rob me, for it is inconsistent with your principles; but I can rob you, for I have none.'"

Another of the company observed that he feared it was in vain for the Church of Rome to contend that she was favorable to freedom of opinion, in any degree or form, so long as the "Index Expurgatorius" was in existence, or such stringent means adopted to repress the circulation and perusal of the Scriptures.

The liberal English Catholic again chafed at this last indictment. "It was," he said, "another of the calumnies with which his Church was treated."

"Hardly a calumny, my good sir," replied the other, "in the face of such facts as that which gave rise to the present conversation, of the encyclical letters of Pius VII., Leo XII., Gregory XVI., and many other Popes, and the well-known fact that it is impossible to obtain in Rome itself a copy of the Scriptures, except at an enormous price, and even then it must be read by special license. Pardon me," he continued, still addressing the English Catholic, "I mean nothing offensive to you; but neither I nor any other English Protestant can consent to admit you sincerely liberal English Roman Catholics to be in a condition to give us the requisite information touching the maxims and principles of your Church. You have been too long accustomed to enjoy and revere religious liberty, not to imagine your Church sympathizes with it; you do not realize what she is abroad; and if you be sincere in condemning such acts as that which led to this conversation, as inconsistent with her genuine principles, why the ominous silence of you and your co-religionists in all such cases? Where are your protests and efforts? How is it you do not denounce maxims and practices so rife throughout Papal Christendom, since you say you would denounce them, if it were attempted to realize them here? When you protest with one voice against these things as inconsistent (so you say) with the principles of your Church, and as therefore deeply dishonoring her,—whether your views on this point be right or wrong,—we shall at least admit you to have a title to give us an opinion on the subject."

"Even then, though," said the Deist, "we may think it safer to consult the opinions, and, what is the practices, of the vast majority of the Roman Catholic Church, and her conduct in the countries in which she holds undisputed sway, and therefore I am anxious to hear whether the Signor would justify imprisonment for reading the Bible."

Our host seemed to think that the conversation proceeded in this direction quite far enough; and his foreign guest should be made uncomfortable by these close inquiries, observed, sarcastically, that he was glad to find that the querists were so anxious to secure the inestimable privilege of freely reading Scriptures. "It is the more admirable," said he to last speaker, "as I am aware it is most disinterested; you having too little value for the Scriptures to read them yourself. Sic vos non vobis: you labor for others. You remind me of the colloquy in the 'Citizen of the World,' between the debtor in jail and the soldier outside his prison window. They were discussing, you recollect, the chances of a French invasion. 'For my part,' cries the prisoner, 'the greatest of my apprehensions is for our freedom; if the French should conquer, what would become of English liberty? 'It is not so much our liberties,' says the soldier, with a profane oath, 'as our religion, that would suffer by such a change; ay, our religion, my lads!'"

The company laughed, and the assailants forgot the former topics. Our host went on further to encourage his foreign guest, though in a left-handed way, with a gravity which, if I had not known him, would not only have staggered, but even imposed upon me.

"For my part," said he, "my good Sir, if I were you, I should not hesitate to acknowledge at once that it is not only the true policy, but the solemn duty, of the Church of Rome to seclude as much as possible the Scriptures from the people." The gentleman looked gratified, and the guests were all attention. "In my judgment much more can be said on behalf of the practice than at first appears; and if I sincerely believed all you do, I should certainly advocate the most stringent measures of repression."

The foreigner began to look quite at his ease. "For example," continued Harrington, in a very quiet tone, "supposing I believed, as you do, that the Holy Virgin is entitled to all the honors which you pay her, so that, as is well known, in Italy and other countries, she even eclipses her Son, and is more eagerly and fondly worshipped,—it would be impossible for me to peruse the meagre accounts given in the New Testament of this so prominent an object of Catholic reverence and worship,—to read the brief, frigid, not to say harsh speeches of Christ,—to contemplate the stolidity of the Apostles with regard to her, throughout their Epistles,—never even mentioning her name,—I say it would be impossible for me to read all this without having the idea suggested that it was never intended that I should pay her such homage as you demand for her, or without feeling suspicious that the New Testament disowned it and knew nothing of it."

"Very true," said the Italian: "I must say that I have often felt that there is such a danger to myself."

"Similarly, what a shock would it perpetually be to my deep reverence for the spiritual head of the Church, and my conviction of his undoubted inheritance, from the Prince of the Apostles, of his august prerogatives, to find no trace of such a personage as the Pope in the sacred page,—the title of 'Bishop of Rome' never whispered,—no hint given that Peter was ever even there! I really think it would be impossible to read the book without feeling my flesh creep and my heart full of doubt. Similarly, take that single mystery of 'transubstantiation'; though it seems sufficiently asserted in one text, which therefore it well (as is, indeed, the practice with every pious Catholic) continually to quote alone, yet, when I look into other portions of the New Testament, I see how perpetually Christ is employing metaphors equally strong, without any such mystery being attached to them. I cannot but feel that I and every other vulgar reader would be sure to be exposed to the peril of suspecting that in that single case a metaphorical meaning much more probable than so great a mystery."

"You reason fairly, my dear Sir," said the Italian.

"Again," continued Harrington, blandly bowing to the compliment, "believing, as I should, in the efficacy of the intercessions of the saints, in the worship of images, in seven sacraments, in indulgences, and necessity of observing a ritual incomparably more elaborate than an undeveloped Christianity admitted, how very, very apt I should be to misinterpret many passages, both in the Old Testament and the New! How is it possible that the vulgar reader should be able to limit the command not to bow down 'to any graven image' to its true meaning,—that is, 'to any image' except those of the Virgin and all the saints; to interpret aright the passages which speak so absolutely about the one Mediator and Intercessor, when there are thousands! How will he be necessarily startled to find 'seven' sacraments grown out of 'two'! How will he be shocked at the apparent—of course only apparent—contempt with which St. Paul speaks of ritual and ceremonial matters, of the futility of 'fasts' and distinctions of 'meats and drinks,' of observing 'days and months and years.' and so on. His whole language, I contend, would necessarily mislead the simple into heresies innumerable. Of numberless texts, again, even if the meaning were not mistaken, the true meaning would never be discovered unless the Church had declared it. Who, for example, would have supposed that the doctrine of the Pope's supremacy and universal jurisdiction lay hid under expressions such as 'I say unto thee that thou art Peter,' and 'Feed my sheep'; or that the two swords of the Prince of the Apostles meant the temporal and spiritual authority with which he was invested? Under such circumstances, I must say, that, if I were a devout Catholic, I should plead for the absolute suppression of a book so infinitely likely—nay, so necessarily certain—to mislead."

"It is precisely on that ground," said the Italian, "and on that ground only, the welfare of the Church, that our Holy Mother does not approve of the Bible being read generally. The true theory of the Roman Catholic Church would never be elicited from it."

"Precisely so," said our host, gravely; "I am sure it could not."

"But then," remarked our friend, the Deist, "since the Church of Rome holds this book to be the inspired revelation of God to mankind, is it not singular to say that this 'revelation' requires to be carefully concealed from mankind; that the Bible is invaluable, indeed, but only while it is unread; and that, in fact, the Church knows herself better than Jesus Christ himself did? for in that book we are supposed to have the words of Him and her founders, and yet it seems they could only mislead! 'Never man spake like this man,' may well be said of Christ, if this were true."

"Never mind him, Signor," said our host. "He secretly cannot but approve of your end, though he disapproves the means." The Deist looked surprised.

"Why, have you not sometimes said that you believe the Bible to be, in many respects, a most pernicious book? that many of the most obstinate and dangerous prejudices of mankind are principally due to it? and that you wish it were in your power to destroy it?"

"Well, I certainly have thought so, if not said so."

"Then you approve of the end, though you disapprove of the means. You ought to thank our friend here, and regret that his work is not done more effectually. But enough of this. I must not have my respected Roman Catholic guests alone put on the defensive. The Signor fairly tells us what his system is in relation to the Bible and why he would place it under lock and key; he tells you also what better thing he substitutes when he removes the Bible. I really think it is but fair and candid in you to do as much. I know you all believe that you are not only in quest of religious truth, but have found it to some extent or other:—for my own part I am exempted from speaking; for I have given over the search in despair."

This frank acknowledgment was followed by some highly curious conversation, of which I regret my inability to recall all the particulars. Suffice it to say, that there were not two who were agreed either as to the grounds on which Christianity was deemed a thing of naught, or on what was to be substituted in its place; one even had his doubts whether any thing need be substituted, and another thought that any thing might be. One of the Rationalists was a little offended at being supposed willing to "abandon" the Bible at all: he declared, on the contrary, his unfeigned reverence for the New Testament at least, as containing, in larger mass and purer ore than any other book in the world, the principles of ethical truth; that he was willing even to admit—with exquisite naivete—that it was inspired in the same sense in which Plato's Dialogues and the Koran were inspired; he merely dispensed with all that was supernatural and miraculous and mystical! The Deist laughed, and told him that he believed just as much, if that constituted a Christian. "I believe," said he, "that the New Testament is quite as much inspired as the Koran of Mahomet; and that it contains more of ethical truth (however it came there) than is to be found in any other book of equal bulk. But," he proceeded, "if you dispense with all that is miraculous in the facts, and all that is peculiar and characteristic in the doctrines,—that is, all which discriminates Christianity from any other religion,—I am afraid that your Christianity is own born brother to my Infidelity. As for your reverence for this inspired book, since you must reject ninety per cent. of the whole, it seems to me very gratuitous; equally so, whether you suppose the compilers believed or disbelieved the facts and doctrines you reject; if the former, and they were deceived, they must have been inspired idiots; if the latter, and were deceiving others, they were surely inspired knaves. For my part," he continued, "while I hold that the book somehow does unaccountably contain more of the morally true and beautiful than any book of equal extent, I also hold that Christianity itself is a pure imposture from beginning to end."

This coarse avowal of adherence to the elder, and, after all, more intelligible deism, brought down upon him at once two of the company. One was the disciple of Strauss (I mean as regards his theory of the origin of Christianity, not as regards his Pantheism); the other a Rationalist, with about the same small tatters of Christianity fluttering about him, but who was a little disposed, like so many German theologians, to consider Strauss as somewhat passe. Unhappily, got athwart each other's bows shortly after they into action. They both enlarged—really in a edifying manner, I could have listened to them an hour—on the absurdity of the Deist's argument! "What!" cried one; "the purest system of ethics from the most shameless impostors!" "And what do you make of the infinitely varied and inimitable marks of simplicity and honesty in the writers?" cried the other. "And who does not see the impossibility of getting up the miracles so as to impose upon a world of bitter and prejudiced enemies in open day?" exclaimed the Rationalist. "They were obviously mere myths," cried the Straussian. "That I must beg to doubt," said the other. And now, as they proceeded to give each his own solution of the difficulty, the scene became comic in the extreme. The Rationalist ridiculed the notion that nations and races, all of whom, in the nature of things, must have been prejudiced against such myths as those of Christianity, could originate or would believe them; and still more, the notion that in so short a space of time these wildest of wild legends (if legends at all) could induce the world to acquiesce in them as historic realities! In his zeal he even said, that, though not altogether satisfied with it, he would sooner believe all the frigid glosses by which the school of Paulus had endeavored to resolve the miracles into misunderstood "natural phenomena." As the dispute became more animated between these three champions, they exhibited a delicate trait of human nature, which I saw our sceptical host most maliciously enjoyed. Each became more anxious to prove that his mode of proving Christianity false was the true mode, than to prove the falsehood of Christianity itself. "I tell you what," said the Straussian, with some warmth, "sooner than believe all the absurdities of such an hypothesis as that of Paulus, I could believe Christianity to be what it professes to be." "I may say the same of that of Strauss," said the other, with equal asperity; "if I had no better escape than his, I could say to him, as Agippa to Paul, 'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.'" "For my part," exclaimed the Deist, who was perfectly contented with his brief solution,—the difficulties of the problem he had never had the patience to master, —"I should rather say, as Festus to Paul, 'Much learning has made you both mad': and sooner than believe the impossibilities of the theory of either,—sooner than suppose men honestly and guilelessly to have misled the world by a book which you and I admit to be a tissue of fables, legends, and mystical non-sense,—I could almost find it in my heart to go over to the Pope himself."

"Good," whispered our host to me, who sat at his left hand; "we shall have them all becoming Christians, by and by, just to spite one another." The admirer of Mr. Atkinson and Miss Martineau here reminded the company that the miracles of the New Testament might be true,—only the result of mesmerism. "Christ," said he, "to employ the words of Mr. Atkinson, was constitutionally a clairvoyant ..... Prophecy and miracle and inspiration are the effects of abnormal conditions of man ..... Prophecy, clairvoyance, healing by touch, visions, dreams, revelations, .... are now known to be simple matters in nature, which may be induced at will, and experimented upon at our firesides, here in England (climate and other circumstances permitting), as well as in the Holy Land."* But no one seemed prepared to receive this hypothesis. At last, our host, addressing the Deist, said, "But you forget, Mr. M., that, though you find it insurmountably difficult to conceive a book full of lies (as you express it) to have been, consciously or unconsciously, the product of honest and guileless minds, you ought to find it a little difficult to conceive a book (as you admit the New Testament to be) of profound moral worth produced by shameless impostors. But let that pass. Let us assume that Christianity, as a supernaturally revealed and miraculously authenticated system, is false, though you are dolefully at variance as to how it is to be proved so; let us assume, I say, that this system is false, and dismiss it. I am much more anxious to hear what is the positive system of religious truth, which you are of course each persuaded is the true one. I have left off to seek,' but if any one will find the truth for me without my 'seeking' it, how rejoiced shall I be!"

—- * He cited the substance of these sentiments. I have since referred to, and here quote, the ipsissima verba. See "Letters," &c., pp. 175, 212. —-

Painful as were the "revelations" which ensued, I would not have missed them on any account. "In vino veritas," says the proverb which on this occasion lied most vilely; yet it was true in the only sense in which "veritas" is there used; for there was unbounded candor and frankness, under the inspiring hospitality of our host, aided by his skilful management of the conversation. Nor was there, I am bound to say, much of coarse ribaldry, even from the free-spoken representative of the Tindals and Woolstons of other days. But the varieties of judgment and opinion in that small company were almost numberless. Fellowes, and two of the Rationalists, were firm believers in the theory of "insight"; that the human spirit derives, by immediate intuition from the "depths" of its consciousness, a "revelation of religious and spiritual truth." They differed, however, as to several articles; but especially as to the little point, whether the fact of man's future existence was amongst the intimations of man's religious nature; one contending that it was, another that it was not, and Fellowes, as usual, with several more of the company, declaring that their consciousness told them nothing about the matter either way. But when some one further declared, amidst these very disputes, that this internal revelation was so clear and plain as not only to anticipate and supersede any "external" revelation, but to render it "impossible" to be given, our host suddenly broke out into a fit of laughter. The disputants were silent, and every one looked to him for an explanation. He seemed to feel that it was due, and, after apologizing for his rudeness, said, that, while some of them were asserting man's clear internal revelation, he could not help thinking of the whimsical contrast presented by the diversified speculations and opinions of even this little party, and the infinitely more whimsical contrast presented by the gross delusions of polytheism and superstition, which in such endless variations of form and unchanging identity of folly had misled the nations of the earth for so many thousands of years: "And just then," said he, "it occurred to me what a curious commentary it would be on the asserted unity and sufficiency of 'internal revelation,' if the 'Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations' were followed up by a 'Great Exhibition of the Idolatry of all Nations' under the same roof. Thither night be brought specimens of the ingenious handicraft of men in the manufacture of deities; we might have the whole process, in all its varieties, complete; the raw material of a God in a block of stone or wood, and the most finished specimen in the shape of a Phidian Jupiter; the countless bits of trumpery which Fetichism has ever consecrated; the divine monsters of ancient Egypt, and the equally divine monsters of modern India; the infinite array of grim deformities hallowed by American, Asiatic, and African superstition. I imagined, notwithstanding the vastness of that Crystal Pantheon, there would still be crowds of their godships who would be obliged to wait outside, having come too late to exhibit their perfections to advantage. However, as I went in fancy up the long aisles, and saw, to the right and the left, the admiring crowds of worshippers, grimacing, and mowing, and prostrating themselves, with a folly which might lead one reasonably to suppose, that, miserable as were the gods, they were gods indeed compared with such worshippers, I imagined my worthy friend Fellowes in the corner where the Bible, in its 120 languages, is now kept, employed in delivering a lecture on the admirable clearness of those intuitions of spiritual truth which constitute each man's particular oracle, and the superfluity of all 'external' revelation. This was, I confess, a little too much for my gravity, and I was involuntarily guilty of the rudeness for which I now apologize." It was certainly a ridiculous vision enough; and we made ourselves very merry by pursuing it for a little while.

Presently the company resumed their solutions off the great problem. The Deist remarked, "that one and only one thing was plain, and indubitable,"—for he was a dogmatist in his way;—it was, "that intellect and power to an indefinite extent had been at work in the universe, but whether the Being to whom these attributes belonged took any cognizance of man, or his actions, he had never been able to make up his mind." "Yet surely it does make a slight difference," said Harrington, "since if God takes no cognizance of man, then, as Cicero long ago remarked of the idle dogs of Epicurus, —I mean gods of Epicurus, I beg their pardon, but really it does not matter which consonant comes first,—atheism and deism are much the same thing." "Why," said the Deist, "there is as much difference as in the theories of our 'intuitional' friends here, one of whom admits, and another denies, the future existence of man; for if we be the ephemeral insects the latter supposes, it little matters what system of religion we espouse or abjure. However, I am clear that, if God require any duty of us, it is that we should reverence him as the Creator of all things,—prayer to him is an absurdity,—and perform those offices of honest men which are so clearly the dictates of conscience,—the reward and punishment being exclusively the result of present laws."

"Which laws," said his next neighbor, "often secure no reward or punishment at all,—or rather, often give the reward to the vice of man, and the punishment to his virtue." "Very true," rejoined the Deist, "and I must say,"—sagely shaking his head,—"that such things make me often suspect the whole of that slippery, uncertain thing called 'natural religion,' whether as taught by the elder deists or modified by our modern spiritualists. Surely they may be abundantly charged with the same faults with which they tax the Christian; for they are full of interminable disputes about the 'truths' or 'sentiments' of their theology."

One of those who had gone further than our Deists felt disposed to question all "immutable morality" original "dictates of conscience." "I doubt," said he, "whether those dictates are any clearer than those dogmas of 'natural religion' which have been so oppugned; and I judge so for the same reason,—the endless disputes of men with regard to the source, the rule, the obligation of what they call duty; which are exactly similar to the disputes which we charge upon the Natural Religionist and the Christian." And here he ran through half a dozen of the two score theories which the history of ethics presents, rare work with Plato and Aristotle, Hobbes, Cudworth, Mandeville, and Bentham. "Meantime," he concluded, "we do see, in point of fact, that the moral rule is most flexible, and to an indeterminate degree the creature of association, custom, and education, so that I am inclined to think that that alone is obligatory which the positive laws and institutions of any society render binding." "So that" cried Harrington, "a man both may and ought to thieve in ancient Sparta, may expose his parents in Hindostan, and commit infanticide in China!" "It is a pity," archly whispered the Italian guest, "that this gentleman was not born in China."

"It is a respectable, but very old speculation," said Harrington, "of which many ancient moralists avowed themselves the advocates, but of which it is only fair to admit that Plato and many other heathens were heartily ashamed."

It seemed as if the bathos of theological and ethical absurdity could not lie deeper; but I was mistaken. The admirer of Mr. Atkinson declared with great modesty that he thought, as did his favorite author, that the whole world had been mad on the subject of theology and morality;—that the prime error consisted in the superficial notion of a Personal Deity, and the foolish attribution of the notion of "sin" and "crime" to human motives and conduct, instead of regarding the former as a name of an absolutely unknown cause of the entire phenomena of the universe, and the latter as part of a series of rigidly necessary antecedents and consequents, for which man is no more to be either blamed or praised than the sun for shining or the avalanche for falling; he added, that only in this way could man attain peace. "As Mr. Atkinson beautifully says, 'What a hopeful and calming influence has such a contemplation of nature! At this moment it is not I, but the nature within me, that dictates my speech and guides my pen. I am what I am. I cannot alter my will, or be other than what I am, and cannot deserve either reward or punishment.' But I feel with him, 'We may preach these things, and men may think us mad or something worse.'" (Pp. 190, 191.)

"And perhaps justly," said Harrington, with a laugh, "for nature has surely, after so many thousands of years, let you know what her law is, and you say that that law is necessary and irreversible, and yet you strive to alter it! You had better leave men to their necessary absurdities."

"Nay," said the other, "as Mr. Atkinson says, from the recognition of a universal law we shall develop a universal love; the disposition and ability to love without offence or ill-feeling towards any; or, as Miss Martineau represents it,—When the mind has completely surmounted every idea of a personal God, of a supreme will, 'what repose begins to pervade the mind! What clearness of moral purpose naturally ensues! and what healthful activity of the moral faculties!' (p. 219) .... What a new perception we obtain of the "beauty of holiness,"—the loveliness of a healthful moral condition,—accordant with the laws of natures, and not with the requisitions of theology!'" (p. 219.)

I got him afterwards to show me these passages, for I could hardly believe that he had quoted them right.

"And as for morality," continued he, "the knowledge which mesmerism gives of the influence of body on body, and consequently of mind on mind, will bring about a morality we have not yet dreamed of. And who shall disguise his nature and his acts when we cannot be sure at any moment that we are free from the clairvoyant eye of some one who is observing our actions and most secret thoughts; and our whole character and history may be read off at any moment!" (H. G. A. to H. M., p. 280.)

What an admirable substitute, thought I, for the idea of an omnipresent and omniscient Deity! Who will not abstain from lying and stealing when he thinks, there is possibly some clairvoyant at the antipodes in mesmeric rapport with his own spirit, and perhaps, by the way, in very sympathizing rapport, if the clairvoyant happen to be in Australia?

It was at this point that our young friend from Germany broke in. "I hold that you are right, Sir," he said to the last speaker, "in saying that God is not a person; but then it is because, as Hegel says, he is personality itself—the universal personality which realizes itself in each human consciousness, as a separate thought of the one eternal mind. Our idea of the absolute is the absolute itself; apart from and out of the universe, therefore, there is no God."

"I think we may grant you that," said Harrington, laughing.

"Nor," continued the other, "is there any God apart from the universal consciousness of man. He—"

"Ought you not to say it?" said Harrington.

"It, then," said our student, "is the entire process of thought combining in itself the objective movement in nature with the logical subjective, and realizing itself in the spiritual totality of humanity. He (or it, if you will) is the eternal movement of the universal, ever raising itself to a subject, which first of all in the subject comes to objectivity and a real consistence, and accordingly absorbs the subject in its abstract individuality. God is, therefore, not a person, but personality itself."

Nobody answered, for nobody understood.

"Q. E. D.," said Harrington, with the utmost gravity.

Thus encouraged, our student was going on to show how much more clear Hegel's views are than those of Schelling. "The only real existence," he said, "is the relation; subject and object, which seem contradictory, are really one,—not one in the sense of Schelling, as opposite poles of the same absolute existence, but one as the relation itself forms the very idea. Not but what in the threefold rhythm of universal existence there are affinities with the three potencies of Schelling; but——"

"Take a glass of wine." said Harrington to his young acquaintance, "take a glass of wine, as the Antiquary said to Sir Arthur Wardour, when he was trying to cough up the barbarous names of his Pictish ancestors, 'and wash down that bead-roll of unbaptized jargon which would choke a dog.'"

We laughed, for we could not help it.

Our young student looked offended, and muttered something about the inaptitude of the English for a deep theosophy and philosophy.

"It is all very well." said he, "Mr. Harrington; but it is not in this way that the profound questions which, under some aspects, have divided such minds as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and under others, Gosehel, Hinrichs, Erdmann, Marheineke, Schaller, Gabler ——-"

Harrington burst out laughing. "They divide a good many philosophers of that last name in England also," said he.

"Why, what have I said?" replied the other, looking surprised and vexed.

"Nothing at all," said Harrington, still laughing. "Nothing that I know of; I am sure I may with truth affirm it. But I beg your pardon for laughing; only I could not help it, at finding you like so many other young philosophers born of German theology and philosophy, attempting to frighten me by a mere roll-call of formidable names. Why, my friend, it is because these things have, as you say, divided these great minds so hopelessly, that I am in difficulty; if the philosophers had agreed about them, it would have been another story. One would think, to hear them invoked by many a youth here, that these powerful minds had convinced one another; instead of that, they have simply confounded one another. It was the very spectacle of their interminable disputes and distractions in philosophy and theology,—ever darker and darker, deeper and deeper, as system after system chased each other away, like the clouds they resemble through a winter sky;—I say it was the very spectacle of their distractions which first made me a sceptic; and I think I am hardly likely to be reconvinced by the mere sound of their names, ushered in by vague professions of profound admiration of their profundity! The praise is often oddly justified by citing something or other, which, obscure enough in the original, is absolute darkness when translated into English; and must, like some versions I have seen of the classics, be examined in the original, in order to gain a glimpse of its meaning."

The student acknowledged that there was certainly much vague admiration and pretension amongst young Englishmen in this matter; but thought that profounder views were to be gathered from these sources than was generally acknowledged.

"Very well," replied Harrington; "I do not deny it, perhaps it is so; and whenever you choose to justify that opinion by expressing in intelligible English the special views of the special author you think thus worthy of attention, whether he be from Germany or Timbuctoo, I humbly venture to say that I will (so far from laughing) examine them with as much patience as yourself. But if you wish to cure me of laughing, I beseech you to refrain from all vague appeals to wholesale authority.

"The most ludicrous circumstance, however," he continued, "connected with this German mania is, that in many cases our admiring countrymen are too late in changing their metaphysical fashions; so that they sometimes take up with rapture a man whom the Germans are just beginning to cast aside. Our servile imitators live on the crumbs that fall from the German table, or run off with the well-picked bone to their kennel, as if it were a treasure, and growl and show their teeth to any one that approaches them, in very superfluous terror of being deprived of it. It would be well if they were to imitate the importers of Parisian fashions, and let us know what is the philosophy or theology a la mode, that we may not run a chance of appearing perfect frights in the estimate even of the Germans themselves."

Coffee was here brought in: and Harrington said, "Thank you, gentlemen, for your candor, though your unanimity does not seem very admirable. In one sentiment, indeed, you are pretty well agreed,—that the Bible is to be discarded; though you are infinitely at variance, as to the grounds on which you think so; Catholic friends deeming it too precious to be intrusted to every body's hands, and the rest of you, as a gift not worth receiving. But as to the systems you would substitute in its place, they are so portentously various that they are hardly likely to cure me of my scepticism; nor even my worthy relative here"—pointing to me—"of his old-fashioned orthodoxy. He will say, 'Much as we theologians differ as to the interpretation of Scripture, our differences are neither so great nor so formidable as those of these gentlemen. I had better remain where I am.'"

Several of the guests stared at me as they would at the remains of a megatherium.

"Is it possible," said one at last, "that you, Sir, can retain a belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible,—excluding incidental errors of transcription and so on?"

"It is not only possible," said I, "but certain."

"Do you mean," said the other, "that you can give satisfactory answers to the objections which can be brought against various parts of it?"

"By no means," said I; "while I think that many may be wholly solved, and more, partially, I admit there are some which are altogether insoluble.'

"Then why, in the name of wonder, do you retain your belief?"

"Because I think that the evidence for retaining it is, on the whole, stronger than the evidence for relinquishing it; that is, that the objections to admitting the objections are stronger than the objections themselves."

"But how do you manage in a controversy with an opponent as to those insoluble objections?"

"I admit them."

"Then you allow his position to be more tenable and reasonable than yours?"

"No," said I, "I take care of that."

"How so?"

"I transfer the war, My good Sir: a practice which I would recommend to most Christians in these days. When I meet with an opponent of the stamp you refer to, who thinks insoluble objections alone are sufficient reasons for rejecting any thing. I say to him, 'My friend, this Christianity, if so clearly false, is not worth talking about: let us quit it. But as you admit, with me, that religious truth is of great moment, and as you think you have it, pray oblige me by your system.' To tell you the truth, I never found any difficulty in propounding plenty of insoluble objections; but if you think differently, you or any gentleman present can make experiment of the matter now."

"Nay, my dear uncle," said Harrington, "you are invading my province. It is I only who can consistently challenge all comers; like the ancient Scythians, I have every thing to gain and nothing to lose."

Whether it was out of respect for the host, or that each felt, after the recent disclosures, that he would not only have Harrington and myself, but every body else, down upon him, nobody accepted this challenge.

At last one of them said he could not even yet comprehend how it was that I could remain an old-fashioned believer in these days of "progress." "It was infidelity itself," I replied, "that early robbed me of the advantages of being an infidel."

Several expressed their surprise, and I told them that, after we had taken tea in the drawing-room (to which we were then summoned), I would, if they felt any curiosity upon the matter, and would allow a little scope to the garrulity of an old man, tell them

HOW IT WAS THAT INFIDELITY PREVENTED MY BECOMING AN INFIDEL.

AFTER tea I gave my story, as nearly as I can recollect, in the following way. Of course I cannot recall the precise words; but the order of the thoughts—how often have they been pondered!—I cannot be mistaken about. _

It is now thirty years ago or more since I was passing through many of the mental conflicts in which I see so many of the young in the present day involved. I have no doubt that the majority of them will come out, probably after an eclipse more or less partial, very orthodox Christians,—so great are the revolutions of opinion which an experience of human life and the necessities of the human heart work upon us! As I look around me, I see few of my youthful contemporaries who have not survived their infidelity.

Far be it from me—(I spoke in a tone which, I imagine, they hardly knew whether to take as compliment or irony)—to affirm that the infidels of this day are like those I knew in my youth. I have no hesitation in saying of us, that a perfectly natural recoil—partly intellectual and partly moral—from the supernatural history, the peculiar doctrines, but, above all, the severe morality of the New Testament, was at the bottom of our unbelief. I have long felt that the reception of that book on the part of any human being is not the least of its proofs that it is divine, for I am persuaded there never was a book naturally more repulsive either to the human head or heart. All the prejudices of man are necessarily arrayed against it. I felt these prejudice, I am now distinctly conscious; nor was I insensible to the palpable advantages of infidelity;—its accommodating morality; its Large margin for the passions and appetites; its doubts of any future world, or its certainty that, if there were one, it would prove a universal paradise (for doubts and certainties are equally within the compass of human wishes); the absolute abolition of hell and every thing like in. I say I saw clearly enough the advantages which infidelity promised, and I acknowledge I was not insensible to them. I think no young men are likely to be.

I do not insinuate that similar advantages have any thing to do with those many peculiar revelations of religion which different oracles have in our day substituted for the New Testament. The arguments against Christianity, indeed, I do not find much altered; the substitutions for it, though distractingly various, are, I confess, in some respects different. Nay, we see that many of our "spiritualists" complain chiefly of the moral and spiritual deficiencies of Christianity; they are afraid, with Mr. Newman, of the conscience of man being DEPRESSED to the Bible standard! So that we must suppose that the aim of some, at least, of our infidel reformers, are prompted by a loftier ideal of "spiritual" purity than Christianity presents!

It certainly was not so then. I felicitate some of you, gentlemen, on being so much holier and wiser, nor only than we were, but even than Christ and his Apostles.

I have said I was not insensible to the advantages of infidelity; but nature had endowed me with prudence as well as passions; and I wanted evidence for what appeared to me its most gratuitous philosophy of the future,—for its too uncertain doubts of all futurity, and its too doubtful certainty of none but a happy one! I also wanted evidence of the falsehood of Christianity itself. As to the former, I shall not trouble you with my difficulties; there were indeed then, as now, an admirable variety of theories; but if I could have been convinced of the futility of the claims of Christianity, I believe I should have been easily satisfied as to a substitute; or rather, unable to decide between Chubb and Bolingbroke, Voltaire and Rousseau, I should most likely have tossed up for my religion.

It was the distractions with regard to the evidences of Christianity that ruined me; and at last condemned me to be a Christian.

I was first troubled, like so many in our day, about the miracles. I could hardly bring my mind to believe them. One day, talking with a jovial fellow whom I casually met (not of very strong mind indeed, but who made up for it by very strong passions) over the improbability of such occurrences, he exclaimed, as he mixed his third glass of brandy and water, "I only wonder how any one can be such a fool as to believe in any stuff of that sort? Do you think that, if the miracles had been really wrought, there could have been any doubters of Christianity?" He tossed off the brandy and water with a triumphant air; and I quite forgot his argument in compassion for his bestiality. I expostulated with him. "You may spare your breath, Mr. Solomon," said he. "May this be my poison (as it will be my poison)," mixing a fourth glass, "if I need any sermons on the subject. Hark ye,—I am perfectly convinced that the habit I am chained to will be the destruction of health, of reputation, of my slender means,—will reduce to beggary and starvation my wife and children,—and yet," drinking again, "I know I shall never leave it off."

"Good heavens!" said I. "Why, you seem as plainly convinced of the infatuation of your conduct as if miracle had been wrought to convince you of it.

"I am." he said, unthinkingly; "ten thousand miracles could not make it plainer; so you may 'spare your breath to cool your porridge,' and preach to one who is not already in the condemned cell."

I was exceedingly shocked; but I thought within myself,—It appears, then, that man may act against convictions, as strong as any that a miracle could produce. It is clear there are no LIMITS to the perversity with which a depraved will and passions can overrule evidence, even where it is admitted by the reason to be invincible. It does not follow, then, that a miracle (which cannot present conclusions more clear) must triumph over them. If the passions can defy the understanding, where it coolly acknowledges they cannot pervert the evidence, how much more easily may they cajole it to suggest doubts of the evidence itself! And what more easy than in relation to miracles? Such a phenomenon might from novelty produce a transient impression; but that would pass away, just as the vivid feelings sometimes excited by a sudden escape from death pass away; the half-roused debauchee resumes his old career, just as if he had never looked over the brink of eternity and shuddered with horror as he gazed. He who had seen a miracle might very soon, and probably would, if he did not like the doctrine it was to confirm, persuade himself that it was an illusion of his senses, for they have deceived him; unless, indeed, he saw a new miracle every day, and then he would be certain to get used to it. How much more easily could the Jews do this, who both hated the doctrine of Him who taught, and, not thinking miracles impossible, could conveniently refer them to Beelzebub!

I felt, therefore, that the brandy and water logic had perfectly convinced me that this was far too precarious ground on which to conclude that the miracles of the New Testament had been wrought.

I was further confirmed in my convictions of the illogical nature of all a priori views on the subject, by the whimsical differences of opinion among my infidel friends.

One told me that it was plain that miracles were "incredible," and "impossible," per se; but he was immediately contradicted by a second, who said that he really could not see any thing incredible or impossible about them; that all that was wanting to make them credible was sufficient evidence, which perhaps had in no case been given.

A third said, that it was of little consequence; that no miracle could prove a moral truth; and; taking a view just the opposite to that of my first acquaintance, swore that, if he saw a score of miracles, he should not be a bit the more inclined to believe in the authority of a religion authenticated by them.

Here was a fine beginning for an ingenuous neophyte, who was eager to be fully initiated in infidel theology!

It set me to examine the miracles themselves, and the evidence for them.

"They were the simple result of fraud practising upon simplicity," said one of the genuine descendants of Bolingbroke and Tindal.

I pondered over it a good deal. At last I said one day to another infidel acquaintance, "You ask me to believe that the miraculous events of the New Testament were contrivances of fraud; which, though ventured upon in the very eyes of those who were interested in detecting them, who must have been prejudiced against them, nay, the majority of whom (as the events show) were determined, whether they detected them or not, not to believe those who wrought them, were yet successfully practised, not only on the deluded disciples of the impostors, but on their unbelieving persecutors, who admitted them to be miracles, only of Beelzebub's performing. I really know not how to believe it. As I look at the general history of religion, I see that this open-day appeal to miracles—especially such as raising the dead—among prejudiced spectators interested in unmasking them is, if unsupported by truth, just the thing under which a religious enterprise inevitably fails."

I reminded him that the French prophets in England got on pretty well till their unlucky attempt to raise the dead, when the bubble burst instantly; that for this reason the more astute impostors have refrained from any pretensions of the kind, from Mahomet downwards; (How discreetly cautious, again, have the Mormonites been on this point!) that the miracles they professed to have wrought were conveniently wrought in secret, on the safe theatre of their mental consciousness; or that they were reserved for times when their disciples were predetermined to believe them, because they were cordial believers already in the religion which appealed to them! I said nothing of the unlikelihood of the instruments—Galilean Jews—whom the theory invests with such superhuman powers of deception; or of the prodigious intellect and lofty ambition with which it also so liberally endows these obscure vagabonds, who not only conceived, in spite of their narrow-hearted Jewish bigotry, such a system as Christianity, but proclaimed their audacious resolve of establishing it on the ruins of every other religion,—Jewish or Heathen. I said nothing of the still stranger moral attributes with which it invests them, (in spite of their being such odious tricksters, in spite of all their grovelling notions and exclusive prejudices,) as the teachers of a singularly elevated and catholic morality; what is still stranger as suffering for it,—strangest of all, as apparently practising it. I said nothing of what is still more wonderful, their acting this inconsistent part from motives we cannot assign or even imagine; their encountering obloquy, persecution, death, in the prosecution of their object, whatever it was. I said nothing of the innumerable and one would think inimitable, traits of nature and sincerity in the narrative of those who record these miracles, and which, if simulated by such liars, would be almost a miracle itself; a narrative, in which majestic indifference to human criticism is everywhere exhibited; in which are no apologies for the extraordinary stories told, no attempt to conciliate prejudice, no embellishment, no invectives (as Pascal says) against the persecutors of Christ himself;—they are simple witnesses, and nothing more, and are seemingly indifferent whether men despise them or not. I repeat, I said nothing of all these paradoxes; I insisted that the mere fact of the successful machination of false miracles, of such a nature, at so many points, in open day, in defiance of every motive and prejudice which must have prompted the world to unmask the cheat,—of a conspiracy successfully prosecuted, not by one, but by many conspirators, whose fortitude, obstinacy, and circumspection, both when acting together and acting alone, never allowed them to betray themselves,—was, per se, incredible; "and yet," said I to my friend, "you ask me to believe it?"

"I ask you to believe it?" cried he, in surprise which equalled my own. "I am not fool enough ask you to believe any thing of the kind: and they are fools who do. The miracles fraudulent machinations! no, no, it was, as you say, evidently impossible. And where shall we look for marks of simplicity and truthfulness, if not in the records which contain them. The fact is." said he (I should mention that it was just about the time that the system of "naturalism" was culminating under the auspices of Paulus of Heidelberg, from whom, at second hand, my infidel friend borrowed as much as he wanted),—"the fact is, that the compilers of the New Testament were pious, simple-minded, excellent enthusiasts, who sincerely, but not the less falsely, mistook natural phenomena for supernatural miracles. What more easy than to suppose people dead when they were not, and who were merely recovered from a swoon or trance? than to imagine the blind, deaf, or dumb to be miraculously healed, when in fact they were cured by medical skill? than to fancy the blaze of a flambeau to be a star, and to shape thunder into articulate speech, and so on? Christ was no miracle-worker, but he was a capital doctor."

I pondered over this "natural" explanation for a long time. At last I ventured to express to a third infidel friend my dissatisfaction with it. "Not only," said I, "is such a perpetual and felicitous genius for gross blundering, such absolute craziness of credulity, in strange contrast with the intellectual and moral elevation which the New Testament writers everywhere evince, and especially in the conception of that Ideal of Excellence which even those who reject all that is supernatural in Christianity acknowledge to be so sublime a masterpiece,—in whose discourses the most admirable ethics are illustrated, and in whose life they are still more divinely dramatized,—not only is such ludicrous madness of fanaticism at variance with the tone of sobriety and simplicity everywhere traceable; but,—what is more,—when I reflect on the number and grossness of these supposed illusions, I find it hard to imagine how to image how even individual could have been honestly stupid enough to be beguiled by them, and utterly impossible to suppose that a number of men should on many occasions have been simultaneously thus befooled! But, what is much more, how can those who must often have managed the phenomena which were thus misinterpreted into miracles,—how, especially, can the great Physician himself, who knew that he was only playing the doctor, be supposed honestly to have allowed the simple-minded followers to persist in so strange an error? Either he, or they, or both, must, one would think, have been guilty of the grossest frauds. But the mere number and simultaneity of such strange illusions, under such a variety of circumstances, render it impossible to receive this hypothesis. I cannot see, I said, that it is so very easy for a number of men to have been continually mistaking 'flambeaux' for 'stars,' 'thunder' for 'human speech,' and 'Roman soldiers' for 'angels.'"

My friend laughed outright. "I should think it is not easy, indeed!" he exclaimed, "especially that last. For my part, I see clearly, on this theory, that either the Apostles or their commentators were the most crazy, addle-headed wretches in the world. Either Paulus of Tarsus or Paulus of Heidelberg was certainly cracked: I believe the last. No, my friend; depend upon it that the Gospels consist of a number of fictions,—many of them very beautiful,—invented, I am inclined to believe, for a very pious purpose, by highly imaginative minds."